t h e m a y f i l e s is foremost a family blog, chronicling everyday life. Life including natural, healthy eating (with recipes thrown in at random), home educating (with ideas popping up sporadically), an attempt to homestead on .2 acres (with very meager yields), raising 3 of 4 children with a rare genetic disorder, and lots of highly personal family triumphs and failures. You may also find an eclectic array of musings on politics, exercise, sewing, emergency preparedness, backyard chickens, and religion. This blog isn't a campaign to glorify anyone or anything. Just simply a record.

....has an intensely emotional connection with her physical body, she wears her emotions in her health

....drives her mom to jealousy because she favors dad

....worries incessantly over safety, which translates into being very responsible and very strict with her siblings

....is known to let out piercing screams when she feels something or someone is in harms way

....loves to perform and be in the spotlight, but wouldn't be labeled as outgoing

....perseveres through scary doctors appointments, and adamantly adheres to treatments, but is also very self conscious of coughing in public

....devotes herself to gymnastics

....loves to sew clothes, flowers, headbands, and pillows for herself and others, but doesn't love following a pattern

....watches and eavesdrops on her parents like a hawk

...loves fashion, dancing, pop music, and takes all of it quite seriously

....begs to sing solos in church

....has an uncanny, tender gift of connection with the elderly

We love you Ellery. We are better parents because of you. You've taught us how to love so much deeper. A first child opens your heart in a way it never has been before. Each year you grow opens our heart to more pain with an equal balance of love. We've wept over your pain and struggles from day one battling PCD. But your talents floor us in kind. It's a risky game to be a parent but one we gladly take on.

5.16.2012

I am so grateful to be a mother by choice. I respect women for all of their choices. God did not create me just as mother. It is one of my roles, and one that brings me tremendous joy but also the burden of myriad menial duties and frustration.

Emmett insisted on having a "dress" made for himself. So actually both he and Brent got a homemade tie. Brent was equally as adamant and actually the driving force behind his own matching tie. We were a bit on the corny side at church but who cares!

My own mom and sisters. We must have taken 150 pictures to get one we all approved of. I'm not sure if this was one of them.

I wish I could say I always have this big of a smile on my face, even when we are piano practicing... But I do have this smile in my heart, even when I'm a bit grouchy.